I wanna use todays protest as an example, with wikipedia being blacked out. Free information is blocked because it infringes some kind of copyright. And I know I'm over reacting because I am thinking about how SOPA will affect the rest of the world in the long run. America shuts a lot of their internet down due to many many many copyright laws that make no sense to me, and since access to unregistered information is now illegal, theres no more wikipedia, or google. no more google means no more facebook, youtube, blogger, and i think even twitter, these sites being used all over the world. No to mention whatever nations would follow suit with SOPA, cracking down with weird copyright laws in their countries, shutting down whatever sites they have. with google out of the way, and whatever else slowly dying out, we would be quickly losing very significant parts of the internet, ie the one super fast way to connect with other nations worldwide, being able to keep tabs on eachother and whatnot. This is sounding pretty Us and Themmy im gonna shut up now.

Right, SOPA is stupid, and completely unconstitutional. The only reason I'm even saying anything is because sometimes this forum goes from "America" to "americans" pretty quickly, and that is a pretty big difference. Just saying, be sure to know why you want to start screaming before you do.

I am not saying we should riot, there has to be a better way to handle this than that. If people become violent or even start issueing threats and ultimatums it will only make the people pushing this garbage push harder and feel more justified in their actions. I am suggesting we (as in people in general not just here) spread the word about what sopa is, I have met many who know nothing about it, and let those in power know what we think about it. I am not saying we should have an armed revolution, but we should let the government know this course of action is stupid and it will do harm without fixing anything. If people do nothing, nothing gets fixed; all I'm sayin.And I'm with Log! on the whole know why you are screaming thing, I just wanted to get a little info circulating not bust out hate on anyone.

I highly doubt that the SOPA bill will be passed. A whole bunch of major companies are against it. True, a lot more companies are for the bill, but if it passes, it will limit the internet to something it's not. No one wants that. But I suppose there is that teeny chance, so why take the risk, I guess?

BTW, I read the article on Wikipedia, and it said that SOPA won't really harm Wikipedia directly because it doesn't violate any copyright laws. However, it does mean they will have to monitor their content closely, so there's that. And you can still view Wikipedia, fortunately (see link).

If it were to pass- or if they passed PIPA- then TZH would have to shift our hosting overseas. It wouldn't be worth the eventual, and inevitable, takedown attempts that would result. When you make a consequence-free way of shutting down sites, it's not an if it happens. it becomes a when.

That said. Our hosting would migrate, probably to Canada. Hell, our current host might even set up a branch there, but that would have to be up to them. We'd have to switch ad providers. We'd have to open new bank accounts, or reactivate them in Canada.

As far as users are concerned, there wouldn't be a change. TZH would still be there. If something really went wrong, you'd just take about three minutes to point your router at a non-US domain name server.

Basically, this legislation would kill all the hosts and internet companies here in the US, but it wouldn't actually affect the content of the web. Nor, even though this is what both bills are DESIGNED to do, would it actually prevent a user's computer from resolving a hostname with an IP address.

It's incredibly stupid legislation. And I'm aghast that one of my congresspeople actually co-sponsored the PIPA version of it. Censorship is never the right answer... much less this economy-wrecking attempt at it.

It's one of those things. This is cartoon-villain level evil, and it's hard to know which to be more upset about- the attempt itself, or the fact that our government is run by such staggeringly stupid people, who didn't even bother learning enough about How Shit Works, and so got it all so very wrong.

...sometimes this forum goes from "America" to "americans" pretty quickly, and that is a pretty big difference.

I think we should mind that, Stan, we do have a nasty case of Harper of our own at the moment, I don't think you want to be associated with that. Sometimes, I roll my eyes at some apparently widespread attitudes coming from down south, but politics is another thing, politics easily slip out of hand. </disgression>

As to SOPA, indeed, what it would mostly achieve is shifting more of the Internet's infrastructure out of the USA, reducing the country's international weight and harming its economy, but given that it's a 300 million people, highly connected country, a lot of content comes from there, and some more is hosted there, so limiting the USA's Internet use would have an impact on what the rest of the world gets to see. Ultimately, that inconvenience would be temporary; the workarounds are pretty obvious, but it doesn't change that it's a bad idea done for bad reasons that just happens to be too bad at it to have that bad consequences. (Yes, I paused to compose a sentence as annoyingly repetitive as possible, why do you ask?)

Worry not, any Wikipedia fans here. You can view the articles you want by simply pressing ESC when the page is loading, before the blackout notice appears. It works for me.

Not really sure how the government might react to the protest about it, but I signed the online petition, because why not? I now realize that the bill will not stop online piracy, but maybe inconvenience it. If they were going to make a bill that would annoy the crap out of everyone, they should at least make sure it can accomplish its main goal. SOPA clearly won't.

As far as users are concerned, there wouldn't be a change. TZH would still be there. If something really went wrong, you'd just take about three minutes to point your router at a non-US domain name server.

Would yall still be able to access out of US servers to upload the content? It was my understanding that though PIPA, ISPs would be forced to block any and all sites that are on the blacklist, so wouldn't an off-shore server hosting the comic be just as vulnerable to being blocked as the server that yall are already on? I was sort of under the impression that even sites that moved off shore would eventually be blocked as well by your ISP, preventing people even within the US from uploading or downloading anything on the blacklist.

Is that just completely wrong? I'm no where near as tech savvy as you, Sir Greg'ins!

Good news, 10 US Senators (12% of the Senate) and over 20 Congressmen have backed off from supporting the bill, and in an election year none of them want to hang their name on anything controversial. Like I do with lots of legislation I contacted my Senators and Congressman and told them my opinion. I will then exercise my vote in November.

I would like to point out one thing though (and I'm not attacking any posters here just want to make a point). This is really a company vs company battle, not the people vs big business. Google, Facebook, Youtube are all companies trying to not loose their content from Hollywood and the music industry, and that side doesn't want to loose it's revenue. It is about money. There was a great article framing this fight as "new economy vs. old economy"

I understand it affects all of our everyday lives and how we not only get information but interact with each other, but at the end of the day it's still about big business and where our money goes.

Would yall still be able to access out of US servers to upload the content? It was my understanding that though PIPA, ISPs would be forced to block any and all sites that are on the blacklist, so wouldn't an off-shore server hosting the comic be just as vulnerable to being blocked as the server that yall are already on? I was sort of under the impression that even sites that moved off shore would eventually be blocked as well by your ISP, preventing people even within the US from uploading or downloading anything on the blacklist.

Is that just completely wrong? I'm no where near as tech savvy as you, Sir Greg'ins!

Since SOPA/PIPA are attacking domain name resolution rather than the actual websites, it wouldn't be a big deal to access the site, by either using foreign DNS servers, or by accessing the site by entering the IP address. For example, when I edit the site's code, that gets uploaded by using an FTP connection that simply hits the IP address.

The *idea* is that your ISP wouldn't be allowed to resolve a domain name... hm. Think of it like a phone book.

You point your browser at a name, and then your computer will look up a domain name name in a phone book, and next to that name you have a phone number- in this case, an IP address.There are LOTS of copies of this phone book out there. Anybody who can register a domain name (when you buy a website address) has a copy. These copies of phone books get shared around, so that everyone has a complete list of what name goes with what number.

SOPA/PIPA are like telling the internet service provider, in the US, to go into their copy of the phone book with a marker and black out entries that someone disagrees with. But, they can't do anything about the copies of the phone book that exist outside of the US.As a user, you can go to your router and tell it what server to use for DNS resolution. Most people don't *ever* change any settings there, which means that you're just asking your ISP for their phone book. But if you wanted, you could access your router and tell it that you want to use something else. If you don't ask the ISP for their phone book, they don't care. If you *just* ask them for a specific IP address? They'll hand it to you and not be penalized for doing so. So you wouldn't notice a difference. Your browser would go 'hey, Canadian DNS, what's the address for this name?', and then it would ask your ISP, 'show me the information from this address', and that would be that. You'd even still see the domain name up in the address bar of your browser.

It's much more damaging to content creators and service providers here in the US, than it would be to consumers. The businesses within the US would have their ad revenue and bank accounts blocked as well- that's why we would have to move TZH offshore. By using offshore hosting, ad services, and banks, there would be nothing that US authorities could do about it. Since offshore banks don't report to the US, all the US would see would be periodic payments from some foreign entity into a US bank account- assuming we bothered to keep a US bank account at all, at that point.

The likely outcome would be that website hosting in the US would die off. Companies like Google, etc. would move their offices into Canada or other countries, over the next few years. If you're outside the US borders, you don't have to do squat to comply with this law. The advertising provisions and financial provisions would be the most damaging, of course, because we'd wind up having to switch the dominant currency- switch to Euros or Canadian Dollars, most likely.And then you'd have ISPs outsource their DNS resolution offshore as well- because if they were no longer responsible for doing the lookup, they wouldn't be liable for the results of that lookup.

It would be a huge business die-off here in the US. It would also cost a LOT of money for everyone involved. Just for us, as in TZH, to switch over to business on the canadian side, we'd probably wind up losing about 30%, ish? of our income. After all, we'd have to pay taxes to Canada for the privilege, and there would be a lot more fees involved. Heck, I don't know if there IS a Canadian equivalent of PayPal, yet. If PayPal.ca actually is a separate corporate entity, there would be no change, but if not... it would get ugly.

And then we'd have to do it all over again in five or ten years as Harper squealed like a little girl, "Let's do that TOO, eh?" (seriously, cartoon villains, WTF? He's so OBVIOUSLY a shill for Murdoch, and somehow nobody calls him on it...)

Unfortunately, these attempts at legislation here in the US will likely continue for the next ten to twenty years, as the baby boomers continue to grow old and feel threatened by the technologies that they don't understand. Because of our population dynamics here in the US, the young people are outnumbered by the old[1], and so have a great deal of difficulty motivating politicians to support our ideals. The fact that we have a large segment of our population that *can* be motivated by fear to support legislation that goes against their interests doesn't help, either. It has allowed the continued concentration of wealth into the hands of the elderly[2], further reducing the abilities of young people to affect real change. Without money or numbers on our side, these attacks against technology, and indeed attacks against the 'young', will continue until the boomers have died off in sufficient numbers that they are no longer a meaningful voting block.

Fortunately, while the politicians are obligated by their voting base to continue their *attacks*, they are under no such obligation to actually *succeed*. So long as they can go home to their voters and say that they tried, the politicians generally don't actually care if they win or lose. As cynical as it sounds, most politicians' motivation comes down to continuing to get re-elected. Without winning their election, after all, they can't push for issues that they *do* care about. Whatever those issues may be. By continuing to push a vocal opposition to each of these attacks, those of us not members of the boomer generation can continue to limit the damage done. It'll be a long haul, but if nothing else, we can always hold onto the truth that time is on our side, not theirs. What they can try, we can try to stop. And what they can do, we can eventually undo. It's a sad fact that we *have* to look at it that way, but, it is what it is. I'm looking forward to the days when we can once again reinvest in our infrastructure and rebuild our country. And if we all work together, and continue to harangue the politicians when they do these things, then we can bring those days somewhat faster, I hope

...and that's probably the most use I'll get from my Poli Sci degree any time soon

Edited to clarify:1) While 'elderly' generally means 65+, I'm including the baby boomers because of the general attitudes and behaviours as a population group. The boomers make up about 34% of our voting-age population, and as of 2012 will be between 48 and 66 years old. Those older than the boomers made up an additional 21% as of 2006... about 20% now, if my math is correct, though I don't have a solid source on that. Together that equates to 54% of our voting-age population.

2) If this (cribbed from here) is accurate, the median -not average- wealth of a boomer is about 190K, while their elders have a mean net worth about 200K. The median net worth of someone my particular age is 8.5K.